For the year to end-march, house prices in Spain rose at a rate lower than our believed-by-no one official inflation rate of 4.5%. But not in the north west regions of Asturias and Galicia, where the figure was 7%. However, a columnist in the Voz de Galicia, discounts these numbers, claiming they’re a statistical artefact. I’d put it down to Brits continuing to buy properties in Green Spain despite the fall in the pound. But apparently not.

When I was young and the mortgage world was sane, whenever the rate rose you were given the choice by your provider to either extend the term or pay the higher rate. It seems the Spanish government is to manage a return to these days by subsidising the banks so the pain for their customers can be eased. This, it seems to me, is to reward profligacy and, as the phrase has it, to ‘privatise profit and nationalise risk’. The banks must be delighted. But I guess it could be worse; the government could be promising to compensate you for any negative equity you suddenly find yourself with. Or to help the greedy and once-highly-profitable construction industry to survive the bad times. Oh, sorry. It’s already said it will do the latter.

Counting the stars on one of the numerous EU flags one sees around Spain adorning Cohesion Fund projects, I noticed there were only thirteen, against a membership of twenty seven. Odd. Not a number I would have chosen.

If, like me, you’re continually struggling to get a balanced view on today’s key issues/religions of Climate Change and Global Warming, here’s something that’s a must-read. It’s said to be a devastating analysis of the case put forward by the International Panel on Climate Change. Reportedly, it is “Intended for a lay audience and signed by scientists from 15 countries. It takes all the key points of the IPCC's ‘consensus’ case and tears them expertly apart, showing how it has either exaggerated, distorted or suppressed the evidence available to it, or has imputed much greater certainty to its findings than is justified by the data”. If you can't face the whole report, just read the Conclusion on p. 26

Galicia Facts

Well, the weather improved a little for the start of yesterday’s international triathlon events here in Pontevedra and there were a couple of hundred spectators, including me, gathered at the start point. But, by the time the women competitors had climbed out of the [dirty, 14 degrees] river Lerez to get on their bikes, the cold and the rain had returned with a vengeance. As they were dressed in scarcely more than bikinis, I wondered whether the ambulance on stand-by was there to treat pneumonia cases. However, I’m delighted to report the winner of the men’s event was the local hero, Javier Gómez Noya. In the women’s race, the favourite, Vanessa Fernandes, retired because of hypothermia - possibly because she was used to warmer things in her native Portugal. The laurels went to Kathrin Mueller, from the more northern climes of Germany. But at least Fernandes got a lot further than the two ladies who dove into the river and then promptly got out after a mere 10 metres. To a wave of sympathy. From me at least. As the Voz de Galicia put it this morning – The public had a chance to see the hardest and most dramatic side of the triathlon challenge. I’ll say!

It’s reported that the Scottish highland bagpipe is a “recent invention, developed in the early 1800s for nostalgic Scottish émigrés.” Just like the kilt and most tartans. However, “Although the Highland bagpipe may be a phoney, there is a genuine tradition of piping in Scotland. A simpler type of pipe, which has its roots in the Islamic world, the Mediterranean and eastern Europe, was popular throughout the Highlands until the battle of Culloden in 1745. . . The first documented bagpipe dates to a 1,000BC Hittite carving from modern Turkey. . . The instrument spread through the near east, Europe and the Mediterranean to become a traditional folk instrument in dozens of countries.” So, I wonder where this leaves the Galician gaita? And our national costume. Probably more genuine and not designed for nostalgic émigrés. Even though there were a lot of these.

Talking of invention, I see that the British equivalent of the stories of a Galician Golden Age was the 19^th century Romantic Nationalist British insistence that pre-Norman-invasion Anglo-Saxons lived in a truly democratic society where, for example, women had equal rights to men and you could with impunity tell the king where you thought he was going wrong. Tripe, apparently. There’s a lot of it around.